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Chimpanzee "Personhood" Is Back In Court
sciencehabit writes Chimpanzees are back in court. Judges in New York State heard the first in a series of appeals attempting to grant "legal personhood" to the animals. The case is part of a larger effort by an animal rights group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a variety of creatures—from research chimps to aquarium dolphins—from captivity. If the case is successful, it could grant personhood to chimps throughout the state.
They'd make better people than corporations do...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You just pulled the rights from a a metric fuck ton of mentally & physically handicapped people
The pro-life busybodies pretty much do everything they can to sabotage these "babies" once they have forced someone else to carry it to term.
They really are the ultimate hypocrites.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There are lots of humans you can't legally marry. They pretty much all have one thing in common: they can't legally give consent.
Also, you really shouldn't look at your sister that way.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
...this case should have been tossed. One can't file on behalf of another (unless they are a legal guardian or hold a power of attorney), and the plaintiffs also can't show any personal harm to themselves.
If they feel strongly enough about the issue, the remedy is political. Convince enough people that 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of state legislatures will agree, and pass a Constitutional amendment.
So human babies don't have rights?
I think the right to personhood should be given to anyone who of their own volition can claim the right. And yes, that also means taking it away from many who have it today.
Including corporations.
I don't see any non-human lifeforms being able to claim that right. Future computers might, or genetically modified/engineered animals.
But I believe most animals should still have the protection of being sentient beings, much like we protect infants and retarded people.
Oh, that's easy.
Said right-wing groups choke money spent on education standards, teach everyone "abstinence only!" when it's not realistic, etc., which results in people having babies because they had unprotected sex and didn't have the education for how to use contraception. Now that babies are born to people who are poor and didn't have the education to know how to reduce the risk of babies from the one act that could take the stress out of their life, they also can't get welfare, medicaid, etc. because "they aren't carrying their fair share," which forces their kids through poverty, shitty education, a lack of contraception knowledge, more babies, and more kids forced through poverty.
Honestly, if hard-right-wingers just said "Hey, we believe abortion is wrong, but use contraception to greatly reduce the risk of having a baby!", they might've actually had some support! But their current stance is "you can't use contraception, and you must take care of anybody you bring into this world on your own. We know you can't help but have sex because it's wired into your brain but screw you anyway."
Independent voter here. I usually vote for moderate Republicans, Independents, or moderate Democrats.
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So, when an ape kills another ape, will we be sending it to jail?
This is about whether the entity itself is considered a person, not whoever's running it.
If a corporation should be given personhood because it's run by humans, than surely cars, dolls and shoes deserve personhood too?
Go ask a Chipmanzee if it is human. Likely you'll get atleast some sort of response.
Now go ask an office building if it is human and see what response it gives you.
Quite frankly, giving a Chimpanzee personhood is slightly less insane than giving a corporation personhood.
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The single most effective technique available to reduce the number of elective abortions would be to promote contraception, in both availability and education. It works - and works almost perfectly. It's the main reason that developed countries have such a low birth rate.
Yet if you look at very any organisation in the pro-life movement you'll find that, almost without exception, they are opposed to contraceptive education, and opposed to providing insurance coverage, and opposed to subsided provision. Many of them (Mostly the ones with Roman Catholic connections) go further than that, and openly consider the use of contraception to be inherently immoral and something that should be legally forbidden.
This contradiction indicates that for all of their rhetoric about the sanctity of life, they are far less concerned with opposing abortion than they are with reversing the sexual revolution and bringing back the natural consequence of pregnancy that once forced everyone to live by the code of their holy text.
It's rare among Catholics, but it's also the official position of the Catholic church. The discrepancy is quite simple: Most of the lay church members ignore almost everything their church teaches. It's a serious problem that the priests are still struggling with every day. Most of the church ignores their teaching, but if they try to get stricter about compliance they would lose far more members than they are willing to accept.
A brief scan through the comments on slashdot so far comes up the usual, lame list of "reasons why this is just so stupid, like".
So, this is not about whether chimpanzees should get the vote.
It isn't about whether they should be considered human.
It isn't about whether they should be allowed/forced to take part in human society on an equal footing.
What it is about, is how we treat the animals in our care; part of that has to touch on whether animals have anything like personality: do they 'feel' rather than simply 'react'? Do they have wishes, intentions, thoughts, or are they simply 'flesh machines'? As our insight grows, it becomes harder and harder to deny that many, if not most, animals are like ourselves in that respect; what separates us is a matter of degrees rather than something fundamental: humans are more intelligent etc, but there is no reason to think we have a 'soul' which other animals don't have.
The other part of the problem is to decide what we ourselves are, or want to be. When we don't want to torture prisoners, when we don't just get out the popcorn and watch the Ebola epidemic etc, it is because we as a society have the choice to care about others. It wasn't always so, and not everybody agrees. But we have chosen to be the kind of people who care and therefore we find it hard to deliberately cause suffering.
Whether legislation is the right way, I don't know; in my experience people often resent rules and laws that are imposed on them, even if they agree on the sentiment behind them. Basically, it is about respect; we should certainly respect other animals on their terms, but having rules imposed on you doesn't feel very respectful.
Corporate personhood refers to the ability to hold a corporation liable for debts and crimes. Are you suggesting I should be able to sue chimps but not corporations?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I'm suggesting you should be able to sue the humans responsible for the crimes of a corporation and not sue either chimps or corporations as all.
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Congress should have the ability to pass legislation restricting the actions of corporations in any way they want.
Corporations are artificial legal constructs which allow special privileges (tax and liability advantages, mainly) to their owners. Since they're constructs of law, they're subject to legal regulation. Corporations are not people, and do not have rights. No right to free speech, no right to vote, etc.
That does not infringe on any individual rights - people still have the right and ability to band together for group speech, etc. They simply can't do it and also gain the special privileges given to corporations.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If these lawsuits succeed, primate research will not stop. Instead, it will be moved offshore. To other countries that might have fewer animal protections than the United States.
Just like if we stop drilling for oil on our soil, drilling will be moved to some other country. Where environmental protections might be laxer than here.
Primate research, petroleum exploration and drilling, manufacturing...we can do these things here, in the United States, where we have laws that offer reasonable protection against environmental damage and exploitation. Or, we can make them so onerous to do here, that we push them offshore to jurisdictions that offer fewer protections than we do. But stopping them altogether isn't going to happen for the foreseeable future.